Tories Spend for Transit Security

[August1991]

Federal Transport Minister Lawrence Cannon is scheduled to make an announcement about the funding this morning in Montreal (at about 10:30 a.m., to be carried live on CTV Newsnet).

Cannon is expected to award up to $80 million to six cities in an effort to prevent the type of bombings that rocked Madrid, London and Mumbai.

CTV

Am I the only one who thinks that many Canadians are going to scratch their heads at this and wonder if there are other priorities?

[Technocrat]

Federal Transport Minister Lawrence Cannon is scheduled to make an announcement about the funding this morning in Montreal (at about 10:30 a.m., to be carried live on CTV Newsnet).

Cannon is expected to award up to $80 million to six cities in an effort to prevent the type of bombings that rocked Madrid, London and Mumbai.

CTV

Am I the only one who thinks that many Canadians are going to scratch their heads at this and wonder if there are other priorities?

nope... monies well wasted. Any new 'security' measures will just amount to cameras on the transit system. Not much help when youve already been blown to smitherines.

[PolyNewbie]

Its not to catch terrorists its to watch you when you catch on to what is really happening.

Paul Craig Roberts writes about this and Bayes Theorem and shows that the cams will not catch terrorists.

See http://www.vdare.com/roberts/060628_gullibility.htm

Paul Craig Roberts was a head economist for the White House in the Regan era. He invented "Reganomics".

[geoffrey]

The biggest CCTV culture didn't have any help from their cameras, why would we expect different? More police officers and transit officers maybe.

[MightyAC]

$37M in cameras and equipment may not be an effective deterrent to terrorism but it should help the existing officers fight crime in general. I would guess that surveillance systems help reduce muggings, assaults, vandalism, etc.

[kimmy]

Its not to catch terrorists its to watch you when you catch on to what is really happening.

Paul Craig Roberts writes about this and Bayes Theorem and shows that the cams will not catch terrorists.

See http://www.vdare.com/roberts/060628_gullibility.htm

Paul Craig Roberts was a head economist for the White House in the Regan era. He invented "Reganomics".

For reference, the statistical work for that article was not done by Roberts.

Floyd Rudmin is the one who did the mathematics.

Here is the article which Roberts cites: http://www.counterpunch.org/rudmin05242006.html

Rudmin's calculations are based on one fundamental and obviously false assumption: his calculations are based on the premise that the NSA is paying equal attention to all 300 million Americans.

He states his mistake right in the opening line of his article:

The Bush administration and the National Security Agency (NSA) have been secretly monitoring the email messages and phone calls of all Americans.

We know that's false. They simply don't have the time or resources to spy on 300,000,000 people. We know that they use criteria (such as lists of people of interest, flagged activities such as buying fertilizer, and of course the dreaded Racial Profiling) to narrow their focus considerably. Redoing the calculations using a number much smaller than the 300,000,000 figure on which Floyd bases his calculations will yield much different results.

As they say, there's "lies, damned lies, and statistics." In this case, he's created misleading results by incorporating bad assumptions into his calculations, or to borrow another phrase, "garbage in, garbage out." He came up with the numbers he came up with because he has an axe to grind.

-k

[kimmy]

And frankly, who cares if it stops terrorists. I'm just hopeful that it will do something to reduce the number of beat-downs and swarmings on public transit. Using public transit can be pretty scary after dark, and for those of us who depend on using transit in off-peak hours, additional security measures will be much appreciated, whether it's enough to stop mad bombers or not.

-k

[blueblood]

We know that they use criteria (such as lists of people of interest, flagged activities such as buying fertilizer

Oh crap, not good for me, i buy a huge quantity of the stuff, that sucks my phone is tapped hahahaha

[jdobbin]

Federal Transport Minister Lawrence Cannon is scheduled to make an announcement about the funding this morning in Montreal (at about 10:30 a.m., to be carried live on CTV Newsnet).

Cannon is expected to award up to $80 million to six cities in an effort to prevent the type of bombings that rocked Madrid, London and Mumbai.

CTV

Am I the only one who thinks that many Canadians are going to scratch their heads at this and wonder if there are other priorities?

I'd settle for seats that weren't sticky. Ew.

[geoffrey]

And frankly, who cares if it stops terrorists. I'm just hopeful that it will do something to reduce the number of beat-downs and swarmings on public transit. Using public transit can be pretty scary after dark, and for those of us who depend on using transit in off-peak hours, additional security measures will be much appreciated, whether it's enough to stop mad bombers or not.

-k

Calgary Transit has platforms covered completely by video... what else are they going to do? That hasn't stopped numerous fights and muggings or what not right in front of the cameras. Remote policing through video cameras does not work at all, it's a big waste of resources. More police on the street does work.

I'd settle for seats that weren't sticky. Ew.

Agreed. Or maybe enough cars on the C-Train so that I could take it in the morning without feeling like a sardine. I only drive to work and school because the C-Train is just so filthy. The extra couple hundred in gas a month is covered by the time I don't have to take off work because of being sick IMO. It's absolutely disgusting those things. I go out of my way to bike sometimes when I only have work or school (it's like 30km between them)... but I won't take the train unless it's coming home late night from the bar.